fitness frivolity and culinary wizardry peppered with life musings, fried in adventure.

The last two weeks have been kind of weird.

And that’s due in 99% part to Boy being back home for work training, while Link stayed with my parents and Piper and I made do in Massachusetts until all could go back to normal.

On Sunday night, when Boy finally landed back home and Link was reunited with our abode (since taking care of both dogs alone at once would have been torture for me), it was then I realized that normal is a really stupid word. And it’s not fun. Even though all the “normal” elements were in place, nothing about the triumphant return to what I was used to was even close to that word.

We lay in bed with both dogs snuggled tightly under the covers at our feet, when suddenly a lump arose in the form of Piper, who then made his way up to the top of the bed and promptly started retching.

A dog throwing up is disconcerting to begin with (They’re so little and frail and helpless and what if they just never actually throw up and choke themselves and then what where is the vet number), but an Italian greyhound going through the motions? It’s the thing of nightmares.

You have this lean little thing, all legs and jagged angles, whose back is suddenly arching and settling violently and who is, in fact, so skinny thanks to nature, that you can almost see the bile traveling through his body, fighting for an exit. You can also hear it at the same time and it’s not unlike a person transforming into a werewolf in a movie, with all the twisting and writhing and gargling. And here was Piper, doing just that.

There was a solid five second comedic look of “Da fuq?” passed between Boy and I as we assessed the situation, before I yelled, “Put him on the floor!”

The very second Piper’s body broke the plane of the bed, careened by Boy’s hand, he puked. Bright orange, all over our beige rug. In that very second I saw how wrong I was to demand he be put on the floor. Better to blemish an area that can be thrown in the wash as opposed to a stain-susceptive piece of material we put a security deposit on when we moved in.

The mess was dutifully cleaned up with Piper snuggled next to his brother in minutes – until, of course, he got right back up and – WHILE HOVERING OVER MY HEAD – started retching again.

I yelled at Boy to throw me a blanket we keep bedside in case Piper wants to sleep on the floor and I missed using that as the catch for the second round of vomit by a millisecond. At least it wasn’t on the floor this time, or my head. Thanks to my ninja skills, I was out of range immediately.

It’s now midnight and we’re stripping our bed, praying this is the last time because we just don’t have any more sheets to put on.

And that was it, thank god. Until 3 a.m. rolled around and the sickness traveled to Piper’s back end, and a big ole stain in the living room in front of the TV was all I had to show for a very broken up four hours of sleep.

Normal. No one needs that. Who would want it when anything else is just so much fun?